I still field too many calls from people on landlines to make this a practical solution for me.

Others have commented on The Killing Joke’s treatment of Barbara Gordon, and I can’t really add anything to that. But there is another, albeit less significant, thing about the graphic novel that has always irritated me. And it’s not even, strictly speaking, Alan Moore’s fault.

There were comments made during the E3 presentation that make me think that Fallout 4 will be native x64. But we probably won’t know for sure until they release the system requirements a month or so before release.

Interesting NPCs is the most impressive quest mod I’ve ever seen for a Bethesda-produced game. I didn’t mention it just because it’s fundamentally different, IMO, from things like Falskaar or Wyrmstooth. Those mods are much more like DLC: go somewhere entirely new and explore. As such, they can be done at pretty much…

Not at all. This is where we nitpick a reporter for Kotaku for a context-free bit of fluff. The Forgotten City looks fine, but pretending that it’s inherently more newsworthy this far in advance of its actual release than a half dozen similar mods is a bit silly.

I understand the problem, though. Skyrim was released in 2011, and releasing a 64-bit-only game then would have been a hugely risky proposition. That excuse won’t fly for Fallout 4, though....

The show avoids technobabble like the plague, but it’s pretty clear that the TARDIS is capable of moving through normal 3D space, even if it’s not designed to do so. But its primary mode of travel is through the space-time vortex. It’s not instantaneous: it takes a certain amount of time relative to its passengers to…

There are several “expansion-sized” mods for Skyrim out already. Falskaar, Wyrmstooth, Beyond Reach, The Gray Cowl of Nocturnal, Moonpath to Elsweyr, etc. The Forgotten City looks competent enough, but nothing particularly special, either. And, personally, I’m always a little nervous about mods that announce their…

Controversial opinions ahoy!

I fully expect Bethesda to improve on their storytelling in Fallout 4, partly because I can’t honestly imagine it getting much worse, and partly because they did showcase some improvement in Skyrim. But I don’t expect a sea change, sadly. They’ve done and said very little that suggests they’ve made monumental strides,…

Van Buren was pretty far along in development when the axe fell (the engine and script were both basically finished, and the maps were about 50% finished). The project lead (J.E. Sawyer) was later the project lead for Fallout: New Vegas, and many of the things originally planned for the aborted project found their way…

There’s bitterness, yes, but that’s not where it comes from. The bitterness comes from the fact that these are people who have been legitimately passed on by the gaming industry. Many of them don’t just prefer older styles of games, they flat out don’t like newer styles. Telling them, in essence, to get with the times…

I guess I mostly just don’t understand why fans of Fallout are not happy with two amazing games that are different from the series roots, whn the alternative was no more fallout or, at the very least, more games like Fallout Tactics and Brotherhood Of Steel. Bethesda loves this franchise and Interplay doesn’t. Bottom…

That presupposes that these critics agree that “anything good” has happened in the first place. That’s my point: if you don’t enjoy the “updated” mechanics of the new games and plain old don’t enjoy them, you don’t have anything to be happy about. The continued existence of a series that has changed so radically that…

Yeah, but so what? Saying it’s the “closest” to the classic games isn’t really saying much. Until Wasteland 2, New Vegas was probably the closest thing to the classic games. And, while I love it, it isn’t really much like the classic isometric Fallout games in any objective sense. Both are fine games, but they don’t…

Define “backlash,” though. I generally steer clear of NMA because a lot of the stuff there veered away from criticism of the games to attacks on Bethesda’s developers, which isn’t cool. But criticism, even harsh criticism, of the games themselves doesn’t need to be justified, IMO. It doesn’t lead to a very cheerful or…

I’m not actually convinced that Wasteland 2 is an effective spiritual successor to the Fallout games. It’s a successor to the first Wasteland title, which, despite inspiring the setting and story of Fallout, is a very different game. Wasteland 2 is a squad-based strategy game with RPG elements. Fallout was a single…

I would ask, if the basic features that drew me towards a series are so fundamentally changed, why should I be grateful that the series is nominally still around? I’m somewhere between NMA and the rest of the Internet: I don’t hate Fallout 3, but I don’t really care for it, either. I’m not sure why I should care that…

I see where they’re coming from, though. It’s difficult when something you love is so completely supplanted by something very different. And it’s even worse when the rest of the world doesn’t acknowledge the difference in the first place, or worse, treats it as an obvious and clear advancement. Being told that the…

The problem is that none of FO3’s characters have much depth, let alone development. Some of them have interesting character quirks, but it’s all fairly superficial, especially compared to the three other main line games in the series.